Soulless rock
by xfmoon
Summary: If he could only get the old Jemma back... Fitz introspection.


**A/N:** As I warned you about, this is a rock story, as in FitzSimmons and the alien rock.

 **Spoilers:** For everything so far, so season 1 & 2.

 **Disclaimer:** I own my soul; if I sold it maybe I could get the rights to agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

* * *

If he could he would take it all back. What he'd said, what he'd done, if he could only get the old Jemma back. This - he was tempted to call a "thing" - that had come back in her place was unbearable. It looked like her, it talked like her, was clever like her, it even smelled like her. But Fitz knew that it wasn't her. Something was missing. This was nowhere near being her. It was like one of those pod-people in alien take-over movies. For anyone who didn't know her, this would be Jemma Simmons, but for him and the rest of the team this was someone else. Someone entirely different.

Fitz felt ashamed now, because he had accused her of changing into something scary, scarier than the monsters they were hunting. When in hindsight he could see, he understood, she had just been scared, terrified even, and nobody had taken the time to provide her with the comfort she needed. She just wanted to protect whatever and whoever was left to protect, and in her fearful state the only option that had seemed to be open to her was violence. Too long she had tried with kindness and failed, eventually coming to the only logic explanation that you had to dispel evil with evil. He regretted his harsh words bitterly now, when the thing in front of him was 100 times worse than his Jemma had been. If his choices were between the slightly changed Jemma and the one in front of him now, he would without any hesitation choose the first one.

The returned Jemma had no manners whatsoever. She ate like a pig, and cared about absolutely nothing. In some instances she was like a naughty child, making a mess wherever she went expecting others to pick up after her. It was as if she felt nothing, there was no compassion left in her. She was a hollow shell, and he did not like it. The stone had consumed her very soul - the thing that made her who she were, the thing that made her special, the thing that made her Jemma. And he had no clue how to get her back. This was uncharted territory, alien territory, literally. And the only one smart enough to help him figure it out was currently in no condition to, and didn't seem particular eager to either. She didn't even know she was different. And worst of all she had forgotten everything about their dinner date.

 **xXx**

When you're empty all you want to do is fill the gap. When you're sad you want to be cheered up. When you're different you want to feel normal. But when you've been eaten by a giant, alien, rock and spit out again without your soul, all you want to do is apparently sit on the couch, watch daytime TV, and eat junk food. He had to do something, if she continued at this rate she might turn into an actual sack of potatoes - it could be possible, the laws of science and nature didn't seem to apply to the world as they knew it anymore, and who knew what kind of microbiological changes the stone had made to her DNA.

But how do you find a soul in a rock? Many scientists don't even believe the soul exists. People are nothing more than containers of energy, millions and millions of firing neurons sending out and receiving signals from one another. Where do you even begin to search? How do you dissect a stone that can change its physical state from solid to liquid and back again? It was an impossible task. Not that he dared to go near that thing. Not even with a chainsaw and safety goggles, wild horses couldn't drag him into the same room as that dreadful stone. What if the same thing that happened to Jemma happened to him, then who would be left to fix them? No, he couldn't take that chance.

Did he really have to tolerate new Jemma forever? With this attitude she would hardly be useful to Shield anymore. But they couldn't send her back home either; her parents would know this wasn't her. Of course they could lie and say she suffered from PTSD, that would explain the erratic behaviour, but it wouldn't feel right. Plus they really didn't know if this was just the first stage of some alien transformation. It was quite nerve wrecking sitting and waiting to see if the caterpillar hatched and turned into a butterfly or perhaps rather a monster or a killing machine.

Skye had changed but they had adapted and accepted her. This - what had happened to Jemma - wasn't the same kind of change; it was something different, but equally as scary. Maybe they just needed time, an adjustment period. Maybe this character change was just a phase, like a temporary illness, until she got her bearings back. She had just been trapped inside a huge, black, alien stone, who knew what that was like. Certainly not him, because she refused to talk about it, to anyone. They had dismissed it with being too traumatic for her to talk about, but what if it was something else? What if after the initial shock it had been amazing, like a psychedelic trip, what if she liked it, craved more? Splintering into atoms and reassembling again had to be an amazing rush, a kick unlike any other earthly experience.

 **xXx**

Just by looking at it you could see that the stone was ancient, it had a certain air about it, all dusty and grim like a paper scroll in a forgotten archive. Cunningly doing its dirty little Venus flytrapping trick for centuries. That meant that in all likelihood there were more souls trapped in there. It gave the term old souls a whole new meaning. What was it even doing with them? Storing them just for fun or consuming them to survive. If it was using them as nourishment, they would already be particles of something else, and then how would he get her back?

All these unanswered questions made his head hurt, more than usual. He wished he could just go to bed; wake up in the morning and this whole nightmare would be over. However there were no take backs in life, once something was said it was out there, and once something had happened it couldn't be undone. If possible you could try and mend the wounds you had caused, with healing and forgiveness, but in the end there would always be scars, whether visible or invisible.

* * *

 **A/N:** Dang it, it turned into Fitz introspection, yet again.

I've heard about the soul stone theory different places; apparently it's a thing in the Marvel universe, so maybe this is it, who knows? I like the idea of one. I just hope it's not evil.

I think I've got a few more rock stories up my sleeve, and writing this actually gave me another idea to one.


End file.
